The Henson Journals

[64]

Saturday, June 2nd, 1917.

1034th day

I left Durham by the early express, and arrived in King's Cross about 2.25 p.m. After leaving my bags at the Deanery of St Paul's, I walked to the Athenaeum, & had tea. There I found Gamble, & had some speech with him. He is rather pessimistic about the outlook both in Church & State, but he is an optimist by comparison with me! I read an article by Lord Selborne in the "XIXth century", defending his report against criticism: but he is more adroit than convincing. Also I read Fawkes's Article on the "Pontificate of Pius X" very scathing & well–written.

Charles came into the Club as I was leaving: he is seeking for a competent divine to fill the office of Regius Prof: of Divinity at Dublin. Unfortunately all the competent divines are sacerdotalists, & all the Evangelical divines are incompetent! I walked back to the Deanery, getting rather wet on the way, as the rain came on with some violence. Linetta came to dinner, and we had much pleasant conversation. Our discussion turned on the ethics of what is called "reprisals", as illustrated by the raid on Freiburg. I took up the position that, if the raid was ordered by the military authorities as requisite for the successful conduct of the war, it could be justified by the general argument which is accepted as adequate to justify war itself: but, if (as appears to be the case) it was pressed on the military authorities by the civil government in the desire to propitiate public opinion, then the raid could not be justified. Linetta is fiercer against the Germans than I am, and less disposed to criticize the reports of fiendish cruelties which come from the fighting zones. There is, perhaps, a certain hardness about the Italian temperament, which is absent from the English: and a ground–tone of implacableness in the Italian hatred which draws from no Christian source. It is the witness of that older world of paganism which lies behind Italian Christianity as a splendid civilization, of which the monuments & memories haunt the modern world, & dominate it.

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